Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones
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Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones
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Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones
#2As long as you manually control the exposure and exposure time, the same can be achieved with an iPhone camera. This is not specific to Pixel.
Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones
#3As long as you manually control the exposure and exposure time, the same can be achieved with an iPhone camera. This is not specific to Pixel.
It seems they have some ML stuff in there for specific features, e.g. sky / land light balance and hot pixel removal (probably similar to how denoising for MC path tracing works).
Aside: randomly recognised Ryan Geiss in the credits, he did the Milkdrop plugin for Winamp back in the day, and also some cool tech demos for Nvidia...
Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones
#4As long as you manually control the exposure and exposure time, the same can be achieved with an iPhone camera. This is not specific to Pixel.
The higher quality does seem specific to the Pixel though, comparison https://twitter.com/reckless/status/1187557180276445186
Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones
#5This is amazing. Now just FYI, for those curious, some recent "old guard" innovations by pro camera makers for astrophotography include:
1. Leveraging the multi-axis image-stabilizing movement available to an in-camera DSLR sensor with GPS for the purpose of tracking the sky during a long-ish exposure to reduce star trails. Ricoh-Pentax Astrotracer. http://www.ricoh-imaging.co.jp/english/photo-life/astro/
2. Removing the camera's IR filter, allowing it to capture hydrogen-alpha rays (656nm). This captures energy (image, color) not otherwise seen by normal camera sensors. Canon EOS Ra. https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/products/d...
I know this only because I've been researching a DSLR/mirrorless camera upgrade but also delaying it regularly while I'm reminded how excellent phone cameras have become! Unless you're a pro, a pixel-peeper, an artist, or just someone who simply enjoys the machinery and process.
Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones
#6As long as you manually control the exposure and exposure time, the same can be achieved with an iPhone camera. This is not specific to Pixel.
The higher quality does seem specific to the Pixel though, comparison https://twitter.com/reckless/status/1187557180276445186
In that example the Pixel has a 6x longer exposure. While Pixels can currently get better night photos currently, it's simply because the software lets them take minutes-long exposures instead of seconds-long. From a hardware point of view I don't think there's an advantage.
Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones
#7Zoomed out, those photos aren’t terrible, but if you click to view a higher resolution version, you can see the softness created by the noise removal algorithm. Based on my experience, the image quality is comparable to DSLRs of about ten years ago. Noise removal is a bandaid. In astrophotography, it will virtually always look softer than reality actually is, and it will also have removed actual stellar objects. There is no substitute for a better, lower noise sensor, but you work with what you have.
Sensor size is inversely correlated with the noise level. Smaller sensors have more noise where the least noise is on full frame (i.e., 35mm) or larger sensors. Phones have small sensors.
Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
The higher quality does seem specific to the Pixel though, comparison https://twitter.com/reckless/status/1187557180276445186
In that example the Pixel has a 6x longer exposure. While Pixels can currently get better night photos currently, it's simply because the software lets them take minutes-long exposures instead of seconds-long. From a hardware point of view I don't think there's an advantage.
Yep it’s just the settings, hardware is basically the same and can achieve the same result.
This is a marketing blog post.
Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones
#9I can't read about commodity hardware stargazing without my mind drifting to 2bit Astrophotography¹ which used the Gameboy Camera².
If you compare a paper star chart from the Gameboy era to Stellarium³ and a Pixel, then it can only lead you to wonder where we will be in another 20 years.
1. http://pietrow.net/astrogb.html
Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones
#10Zoomed out, those photos aren’t terrible, but if you click to view a higher resolution version, you can see the softness created by the noise removal algorithm. Based on my experience, the image quality is comparable to DSLRs of about ten years ago. Noise removal is a bandaid. In astrophotography, it will virtually always look softer than reality actually is, and it will also have removed actual stellar objects. Ther…
that's exactly what is amazing about this tech - 10 years ago you'd have to carry a backpack, now the same quality pictures can be taken with a multi-purpose device which fits in your pocket. nothing to complain about if you ask me!